Pages

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Ultimate Pizza Crust, from King Arthur Flour

If I didn't love my life in California so much, I'd be pounding on King Arthur Flour's headquarters in Vermont-- looking for a job with them. I love their products! I love their recipes, and I especially love their Blog. Their Golden Pull Apart Buns are amazing! I recently made their Puff Turnovers, which my son is begging me to make again. Pizza dough has been on my radar for some time. You see, I cannot help buying KAF's wide array of ingredients and "enhancers" that they sell. Two products I bought, on my last KAF shopping spree, were their Pizza Dough Flavor and their Dough Improver. On Sunday, I finally decided to use a King Arthur Flour recipe for pizza dough. What I liked about this recipe was semolina flour plays a role in the dry ingredients. I already had semolina flour, from my successful experiment in making Semolina Gnocchi:

I used King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour, semolina*, King Arthur Easy-Roll Dough Improver (optional, but helpful), Pizza Dough Flavor (optional, but delicious), SAF instant yeast, salt, and olive oil, and cool water.
*If you don't want to use semolina, use all-purpose flour, and reduce the water (printable recipe follows).

Mix and knead together all of the dough ingredients--by hand, mixer or bread machine–till you've created a smooth, very soft, fairly sticky dough. Don't over-knead the dough; it should hold together, but can still look fairly rough on the surface. Allow the dough to rise, covered, for 45 minutes; then refrigerate it for 4 hours (or up to 36 hours); this step will develop the crust's flavor.NOTE: My dough fermented in the fridge for two days, without any problems.

Tonight, I let this sit at room temperature for about an hour. I preheated a pizza stone at 450F, while I rolled out the door. I found the dough to be super easy to work with. Per KAF's instruction, I eased the dough onto my hot pizza stone, and baked it for about 8 minutes. NOTE TO SELF: Buy a pizza peel! When I checked the crust, there was a bubble. I deflated it by poking it and flattening it, gently. For the toppings, I had made some homemade basil pesto (last week)...

and...

...I had some Roma tomatoes. After par-baking the pizza crust, I drizzled a little olive oil, and then some pesto. I almost used fresh mozzarella, but instead...NOTE: I've been asked why I par-baked the crust. The answer is, I didn't want a soggy crust. Since then, I have purchased a baking stone that I preheat at 475F. I can slip the unbaked pizza onto the hot stone and I don't end up with a soggy crust. A pizza peel makes this easy, but you can make your pizza on parchment paper on the flip side of a large baking sheet.

Good Ole Trader Joe's... I love this cheese blend!

I'm ready to bake this for about 10-15 minutes, at 450F. I kept a sharp eye on it, though...

10 minutes later... Mama Mia! That's a beautiful pizza crust!

How 'bout that cheese?

I didn't photograph the ice cold BirraMoretti that I poured to go with this...

King Arthur Flour got this recipe right! OMG!!! This crust had so much flavor. The crust was crunchy, and it wasn't soggy in any way! I am so glad that I bought the pizza dough flavor, because it makes this pizza taste sublime.

I don't need to look anywhere else-- this is the pizza dough that I will make from now on! I do think that the fermenting of the dough makes a flavor difference, too. One day, I am going to make it to Vermont. I've never been there, but it's been on my wish list for many years. You can bet, that I will take classes at King Arthur Flour. If you love pizza, please try this dough recipe. It's amazing. Tell King Arthur Flour that I sent you... maybe they'll invite me to come play in their test kitchen. I wish.

I always post a printable recipe card at
the end of each recipe post. If you cannot view it, you might be using
an older version of InternetExplorer. You should be able to view my
recipe cards with Safari, Mozilla, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.If you still can't view the recipe card, all of my recipes are stored on Key Ingredient, by clicking here.

Note to self: buy a pizza peel - LOL! I need a pizza peel too. Isn't it hard to get the crust onto the hot pizza stone w/out the peel?Your pizza looks fabulous and I've got my eye on the pizza dough flavoring. Sometimes pizza dough doesn't have a lot of flavor and this would definitely help with that. Great post Debby!

Just a note to let you know that I just bought both the KA Perfect Pizza Flour Blend and the Pizza Dough Enhancer. I use the KA flour, but this is my first order with them. I'm excited to get it in the mail and give it a go!

I've never made my own pizza. Is that pathetic or what? I keep saying I'm waiting for someone to buy me a stone.

KAF catalogs are addictive to me. I love the flours. I admit I haven't tried all of their enhancers and such. I'm dying to try their pie filling thickeners though. Apple pie would be less tricky that way.

Just came across your pizza dough and had to comment. It looks delicious but one thing I found interesting is that you par-baked the crust before adding the toppings. Just wondering why as it's quite unusual to do traditionally. I'm guessing it makes the crust crunchier. Is that the case? Just curious!

That's a very good question, and I should have explained that. I did it to get a crunchier crust...and I found that when I par-bake the pizza dough, the tomatoes and pesto don't make the crust soggy. I hope that makes sense.

Welcome!

Welcome to my internet kitchen. Please, sit back and relax, and watch me make delicious food and bakery recipes. Most of my recipes are simple, flavorful meals-- and a few baked treats. I focus on using fresh, seasonal ingredients and I try to avoid using boxed mixes and processed foods. I'm having fun learning how to cook like my grandmother once did-- from scratch! I hope that my step-by-step photos will inspire a timid cook to try them. Even if you're a seasoned cook, hopefully you'll learn a new tip or two.

If you have any questions,or just want to say "hello", please feel free to email me: foodiewife@gmail.com

Join Me On Facebook

Please respect my photo's copyrights!

Please be courteous. Don't steal my content!

Unfortunately, I am finding that my photos are being copied and used on other blogs. This makes my otherwise cheerful personality, very unhappy.If you'd like to use one of my photographs, all you have to do is email me at foodiewife@gmail.com. Please, do not use my photographs to represent a recipe that isn't mine, and without linking it back to me. Failure to use my work without my permission is copyright infringement. Thank you!

Looking for a specific recipe? Start here:

Loading...

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address:

Please start your Amazon shopping here. I receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you!

Mardis Gras King Cake (with a Cream Cheese filling)

Super Bowl Noms

Grab A Button

Do you "Pinterest"?

Privacy Policy

This policy is valid from 30 August 2014

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

The compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog. All advertising is in the form of advertisements generated by a third party ad network. Those advertisements will be identified as paid advertisements.

The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.